A Thread for Cyclists - Where Do you Ride?

by cofty 67 Replies latest social physical

  • cofty
    cofty

    Love that road gypsy sam.

    I recently bought cycling glasses. I had been putting it off because I thought they were pretentious but I got fed up picking flies out my eyeballs!

  • Zoos
    Zoos

    The moment I opened this thread I had this tune in my head. Ah, the power of suggestion.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GugsCdLHm-Q&feature=kp

    I'm also a novice spinner. I spent $750 on a nice bike last December and outfitted it for commuting to work. (headlight, taillight, pannier). I rode it around the neighborhood exactly one time and then the weather got too cold. But I'm up and running on it now. I start out at 4am and travel 45 mins to the gym, workout for an hour and then another 10 mins to work. After 9 hours doing sometimes hard, physical work, I ride an hour home.

    Going home is mostly uphill and that's when the cuss words leak out.

    NOTE TO SELF: What the hell were you thinking?

  • cofty
    cofty

    4am! Wow that is commitment.

  • KateWild
    KateWild

    Good OP cofty. Good for you and a fine example. I used to cycle 14 miles a day to uni. I remember the days. Kate xx

  • jgnat
    jgnat

    Here is a bucket list trip.

    http://www.rockymountaincycle.com/icefields.html

    I am not cycling yet but maybe this fall.

  • Zoos
    Zoos

    When I was 14, a pioneer brother (maybe aged 20-ish) took me on a road trip to the Grand Canyon. We stopped at a gas station on the north rim and met a bicyclist who was on his way to Canada. I got to talk with him for a while and asked him all kinds of questions about his bike, gear, massive legs, where do you shower?, how do you support yourself if your home is that bike?, (which it was - he told me). He said he makes a round trip from somewhere in Canada to Panama every year, buying turquois in the south and selling it in the north to support himself.

    That's when I became interested in cycling.

    Every year my family would travel through Island Park and Yellowstone National Park to camp for a week on our way to the district convention in Billings, Montana. Every year I would watch the cyclist hoofing up those steep mountains, wanting a bike of my own that I could travel with. Oh, I had a bike of my own - a K-Mart dirt bike that got me to school and back. But a real traveling bike, a Schwinn maybe, or a Cannondale. I knew my folks couldn't afford something like that. Not with four other kids to feed, clothe and school.

    30 years later I have a Cannondale hybrid now. Not exactly a long distance traveling bike. I consider mine more of a starter kit. But I have been eye-balling the Smokey Mountain range out my back door and the road bike I intend to buy at the cycle shop. I've already mapped out the route I'm going to take, the hotels I'll stay in, and the supply of nitroglycerin for all the anticipated heart attacks.

    If I die up there, I'll die happy.

  • cofty
    cofty

    Another excursion to Lindisfane this evening. Another 18 miles in 80 minutes averaging 13.5mph

    I took these pictures of the Priory on my camera phone. It was founded by St Aiden in the 7th century and knocked down by the Vikings in the 9th. It was re-established in Norman times (11th Century) and eventually closed by Henry VIII.

    It was in this building that the Lindisfarne Gospels were made...

    Came back over the causeway at 20mph with a tail wind.

  • James Brown
    James Brown

    For the middle 25 years of my work life I rode my bike to work evryday. 7.5 miles round trip.

    Some days I would run.

    I carried glasses for the bugs. They could be blinding. Sometimes the bugs still got in my eyes with glasses on.

    When I rode to work. I would go down side streets through a trailer park and on the sidewalk of the major road.

    I don't consider myself a cyclist but I do ride a lot. I ride my bike to 2 soccer games a month to watch the Tampa Bay Rowdies.

    I live in Pinellas County Florida and they have converted abandoned train routes, tracks into trails from the north to the south of the

    county. The part of Florida I live in is very cyclist friendly.

  • LoisLane looking for Superman
    LoisLane looking for Superman

    I can't imagine how lovely that must be

    To live in such majesty

    Now the castle lay in ruin

    Of what must once have been

    Total utter angelic and heavenly.

    For you to have this privilege

    Of riding your bike tonight and again

    Past buildings bold and flaunted

    Where people partied and sinned

    Is now this pile of stacked stone, once thought to be haunted

    As the wind rushes past your head

    The castle's swirling air calls out to you

    Whispering, Ah, there goes someone by

    I've not been forgotten.

    LoisLane

  • fiddler
    fiddler

    I got myself a Giant hybrid for my 55th birthday...my present to myself. I mostly ride around town but like hitting the local rail trails, too. One trip to the Banks/Vernonia trail with my daughter and her boyfriend we got positively drenched but did manage to get a picture of an owl watching all the soaked bikers riding by. I sent it in to Rails-To-Trails and they used it for the main photo for that trail! If you go to railstotrails.org you can see it under the Banks/Vernonia trail in Oregon.

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